One chapter recounts how Martha Hughes Cannon, a medical school graduate, defeated her husband to become the first female state senator in the United States in 1896.

Another describes how Mary Woolley Chamberlain became the first woman to be elected as mayor of a southern Utah town with an all-woman town council in 1911.

A third tells how Elizabeth C. McCune helped LDS Church leaders to recognize the power of sister missionaries in 1897.

These and other inspiring stories are among many found in "Women of Faith in the Latter Days, Vol. 3," co-edited by Richard E. Turley Jr. and Brittany A. Chapman, which features women of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints born between 1846 and 1870.

"We invite you to join with us in celebrating the many Latter-day Saint women whose lives should be an inspiration to readers in the present generation and in generations to come," Turley and Chapman wrote in the book's introduction.

In Volume 3, readers can learn about two general Relief Society presidents, one of the first African-American LDS converts, the first female on the University of Utah faculty, and a suffragist of national prominence who helped secure women's rights, among others.

Additional biographies of Latter-day Saint women of faith born between 1846 and 1870 are available in the e-book edition.

"All the women featured in this volume knew pioneer life first hand," the co-editors wrote in the book's preface. "They also experienced the gradual transition to modern life, some of them living into the 1950s and '60s. ... The women whose stories are told herein hail not only from Utah but from other areas of the Americas and the world, including Japan, New Zealand and Scandinavia."

Turley serves as the assistant church historian and recorder of the LDS Church. Chapman is a historian in the church history department.